Unfaithful minimal Heilbronn characters of finite groups. (Q716477)

Necessary and sufficient conditions for a finite group \(G\) are obtained to possess an ``unfaithful minimal Heilbronn character'' (i.e., a virtual character but not a character of \(G\) whose inner product with every monomial character is nonnegative, whose restriction to every proper subgroup and quotient is a character, and whose restriction to some proper subgroup is unfaithful). An application constraining hypothetical minimal counterexamples to Artin's conjecture on the holomorphy of \(L\)-series is given. More precisely, let \(\vartheta\) be the virtual character of the Galois group \(\text{Gal}(E/F)\) where \(E/F\) is a finite Galois extension of number fields and \(\chi\) a character of \(G=\text{Gal}(E/F)\) with Artin \(L\)-series \(L(s,\chi,E/F)\). Artin's conjecture is that \(L(s,\chi,E/F)\) is holomorphic in the whole complex plane except for a possible pole at \(s=1\). The character \(\vartheta\) is defined by \[ \vartheta=\sum_{\chi\in\text{Irr}(G)}\text{ord}_{s=s_0}(L(s,\chi,E/F))\chi; \] here \(s_0\in\mathbb{C}\setminus\{1\}\) and \(\text{ord}_{s=s_0}(L(s,\chi,E/F))\) denotes the order of zero or pole of the \(L\)-series at \(s_0\). It was \textit{H. Heilbronn} [in Can. J. Math. 25, 870-873 (1973; Zbl 0272.12010)], who introduced the virtual characters \(\vartheta\). Clearly \(\vartheta\in\text{Char}(G)\) or \(\vartheta=\)(zero-character) precisely when Artin's conjecture is true at \(s_0\) (i.e., no \(L\)-series has a pole there). Faithful irreducible Heilbronn characters were studied before. In order to find so-called minimal counterexamples to Artin's conjecture (minimal in a specific sense), the author considers so-called ``unfaithful minimal Heilbronn characters''. His main result (Theorem 1) is in paraphrased form: Theorem. Let \(\vartheta\) be an unfaithful minimal Heilbronn character of \(G\). Then there exists \(P\in\text{Syl}_p(G)\) for some prime \(p\) on which \(\vartheta|_p\in\text{Char}(P)\) holds and where \(\vartheta|_p\) is unfaithful. Then: 1) \(p\) is odd; 2) \(G\) is quasisimple with \(|Z(G)|\) not divisible by \(p\); 3) \(P\) is cyclic; 4) \(N_G(P)\) is a maximal subgroup of \(G\); 5. either \(N_G(P)\) is the unique maximal subgroup of \(G\) containing \(\Omega_1(P)\), or \(G/Z(G)\cong L_2(q)\) for \(q\) an odd prime with \(p\mid(q-1)\) such that \(\Omega_1(P)\leq N_G(Q)\) for some \(Q\in\text{Syl}_q(G)\). -- The converse statement holds also; as to the precise formulation of it, see the paper. The proof of Theorem 1 relies on a lot of technical lemmas connected to the classification of the finite simple groups. These lemmas and arguments are worthwhile to study on their own account.